Julie—Hélène's friend

Table of Contents

A glass blowing artist collaborating with her best friend Hélène to make magical artefacts. Her parents were cursed for betraying the emperor, and she inherited the curse by mistake. This gives her disabling chronic pain and makes people shun her.

The curse

Julie's parents were important imperial dignitaries who ended up rebelling against the emperor. They were caught and punished with a curse from the hand of the emperor himself. Unfortunately, since the emperor is very powerful and he was very angry at the betrayal, the curse was overpowered and took roots far too deeply in the body of Julie's parents, and once they conceived a child, she bore the curse too.
The spread of a legal curse to someone not concerned by the initial sentence is rare but not unheard of. In such cases, healers or the judge responsible for the casting are supposed to break them on the child concerned. However, no one wants to risk angering the emperor by touching the curse on Julie—if they would even have the power to do anything about it. Many also think that the curse passed on to her because she was a bad aple, rotten to the core from birth, and that she should be ashamed of herself. This means that all her life Julie has had to live with that curse which manifests as a disabling chronic disease, and that she's had access to very little healing to aleviate its symptoms.

Childhood

Julie spent her childhood in the capital with her parents, with them struggling to find a way to earn any money and everyone around them thinking Julie should be ashamed for bearing the curse and ostracising her for it. In private, her parents were refusing to express any regret for their action and were speaking against the emperor and the empire. This has hurt Julie a lot and made her anger brew in silence for years. As soon as she reached her 16 birthday, she left her family and the region to go to a place where nobody would know about her.

Her life now

Since then, Julie has become a glass blowing artist who crafts magical artefact. She is more interested in the artistic aspect than the magical one, and so she often collaborates with enchanters. This is how she's met Hélène. Hélène mostly lives as a recluse and is an exceptional enchantress who needs no help to make great artefacts. However, she let herself be persuaded once and saw that she is working well with Julie. She also benefits from their collaboration as anchoring the magic during the glass blowing allows for more powerful and delicate magic in the artefacts than enchanting the glass afterwards.
Hélène and Julie have become great friends, and Julie was not able to hide from Hélène the existence of the curse. To Julie's surprise, rather than be horrified and shun her, Hélène instead has put her mind into finding a way to break the curse. So far, she has managed to loosen it and soften Julie's symptoms, which is already far better than Julie thought would ever be possible.

Hélène frowned as Julie's hands spasms again around her tools, almost making her drop the glass she was working on. The damn curse was back to full strength already, and Hélène had run out of algae. She would have to get in contact with her parents again and risk Grandmother's suspicion at them spending so much money on something they should not be interested in.
Being attached to people was so troublesome...

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Related articles

Hélène

Relationships Hélène's family · Friends (Julie, Hélène's friend, Old Malik) · Soulmates (The Emperor and his soulmates) Work Enchanting · Overview of the professions in the Empire · Runic diagrams · Fixed wards, clothes wards, and portable wards Problems Soulmates · The Sannian kidnapping announcement · The imperial curse—the ultimate judgment on traitors · Winners of the neighbourhood wall painting competition Locations Geography of the Empire of Arboise · Ilara—Hélène's home region · Quanahr—Hélène's town · Arboise—Capital of the Empire · The imperial palace · The emperor's quarters